


the old familiar sting

by Nonymos



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Blood, Full Steve Ahead, M/M, MCU Timelapse, Self-Harm, Stubborn Steve, Vampire Bucky Barnes, Vomiting, and he's not the only one, from brooklyn to wakanda with love, shout-out to that one scene in reservoir chronicle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 15:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13056555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonymos/pseuds/Nonymos
Summary: There's something a little off with Bucky, but Steve's loved him since he was a six-year-old scrap of nothing in Brooklyn, and he ain't the type to back down so easy.





	the old familiar sting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starmaki (themirrordarkly)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themirrordarkly/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [the old familiar sting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14549703) by Anonymous 



> At long last, here is the first of my two contributions to Fandom Loves Puerto Rico! Thank you so much to starmaki for bidding on me. ♥ Enjoy this vampire Stucky ficlet, y'all.

  

# XX

 

The history books insisted Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes had met on the playground, saying that seven-year-old James had rescued the boy who’d grow up to be Captain America from bullies, and that they hadn’t left each other since. It was a nice story, and it was also true. But it wasn’t the whole story.

The actual first time they’d met, Bucky Barnes was puking out his guts in the bathroom during recess.

“What d’you want?” he panted when he saw Steve staring at him. “Go away.”

“Are you alright?” Steve asked.

He was already sick a lot, small as he was, and he thought this boy looked sick, too. He was pale as a sheet and shaking all over. The dark circles under his eyes didn’t help.

“M’fine. Jus’—” Bucky threw up some more. Sweat was beading at his temples. “Shouldn’ve ate chocolate for lunch.”

This made an impression on Steve; maybe his mom was on to something when she said he shouldn’t eat too many sweets. He noticed the toilet paper roll was empty in Bucky’s stall, and fetched him some from the one right over.

“Here,” Steve said, handing it to him.

Bucky snatched it without looking at him and wiped his mouth with a shivering hand. He kept his back stubbornly turned to Steve, who shrugged and went back out, kicking dirt until the bell rang. Another day alone at recess.

But the next day Bucky helped him, made the bullies leave, and Steve almost wanted to tell him off because he had his six-year-old pride. Then he remembered how he’d helped Bucky the day before, and took Bucky’s hand to get up.

“Feelin’ better?” he asked, even though he was the one with a nosebleed and a cut on his chin.

“M’ all good,” Bucky grinned. The dark circles under his eyes were gone. He put his arm around Steve’s skinny shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go see what’s for lunch today.”

 

*

 

The Rogers family was just Steve and his mom. Easy to count, easy to remember. Now the _Barnes_ family, two blocks over, was Bucky’s mom and dad and Bucky himself and his three baby sisters, and sometimes his aunts and uncles—and yet they never seemed to run out of money, when Sarah Rogers could barely make ends meet every months. It was a mystery Steve couldn’t solve, even at the ripe old age of fourteen years old, but it didn’t really matter. It didn’t matter either that Bucky was one year older and already looking like a man, with broad shoulders and a jaunty smile and perfectly coiffed hair. Everyone was gorgeous in the Barnes house. They all got along, too, always had new relatives visiting, and a lot of holidays Steve wasn’t allowed to participate in.

“They’re Jewish,” his mom told him one day, then paused. “Well, I think.”

It was true that Bucky had weird eating habits. He loved to stay for dinner, but he was never very hungry, always saying he was already full and really couldn’t eat one more bite. At first, Steve and his mom both thought Bucky was lying—like maybe Bucky’s mom had told him to refuse food at the Rogers’ house, on account of them being so poor. But the one time Steve and his mom ganged up on Bucky to make him eat, he ended up in the bathroom throwing up all he could, just like the day Steve had met him.

They stopped pestering him after that. But Steve started noticing that Bucky didn’t _always_ look handsome. Well, no—he did, but sometimes he also looked sick. Always with those dark bags under his eyes like he had two shiners for the price of one. Every time Steve caught him looking ill, though, he showed up fresh-faced the next day with a spring in his step.

“Do you have food allergies?” Steve asked him one day.

“Somethin’ like that,” Bucky shrugged, easily as always. “Doesn’t matter, right? I ain’t starving.”

He sure wasn’t, Steve thought, looking at his sturdy frame, great hair and blinding smile. Like the rest of his family, his tall, elegant mom with sleek dark hair and heavy lids, his square-jawed father with twinkling brown eyes and a secret smile. His pretty sisters, oval-faced, with smooth skin and long lashes. All of them, beautiful like they’d walked out of a movie screen. Not that Bucky liked movies much—he hadn’t wanted to go back ever since he’d been terrified by Lugosi in ’31. Steve had barely paid attention to the screen, hyperfocused as he was on Bucky’s arm casually thrown around the back of his seat.

 

*

 

Bucky and Steve decided to get a place together after Steve’s mom passed. Winifred Barnes wasn’t too happy about it for some reason—Steve could tell in the tight line of her beautiful lips—but Steve couldn’t stay with them like Bucky had offered at first; there wasn’t enough room, he said meekly. Steve knew for a fact that had to be untrue, but didn’t insist. He knew where he wasn’t wanted. Besides, he’d never really stayed over at the Barnes house, not even for dinner. They were a tightly-knit family, not unkind but very reserved.

Made sense, what with them being Jewish and all, Steve said the day they moved in together.

“Jewish?” Bucky repeated. “We’re not Jewish.”

“You’re not?” Steve blinked, distracted from unpacking boxes for a moment. He wanted to argue, but the truth was that he didn’t really know anything about being Jewish. “But… I thought… your grandparents were Romanian immigrants, right?”

“Yeah. Not Jewish Romanian, though.” A smile was twitching on Bucky’s lips. “You been thinking that all along? What on earth put that thought into your head, Rogers?”

“I dunno,” Steve said defensively. He didn’t want to blame his mom. He didn’t want to _talk_ about his mom, and furiously fought the tears that rose to his eyes. “Your eating habits and your big family and your weird holidays and—” _how rich you are,_ he almost said, but shut his mouth just in time and felt like punching himself in the face. That wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. He hadn’t even said it, anyway, but his ears burned with shame all the same.

Bucky laughed. “God, you make it sound convincin’ as all hell. That’s what I shoulda been tellin’ people this whole time.”

Steve’s good ear pricked up, because this meant the Barnes family _was…_ well, something. Not Jewish, but _something._

He didn’t put too much thought into it. After all—he mused, watching the ripple of Bucky’s back muscles when he bent down to pick up the last boxes, eyeing the sheen of sweat on his arms—after all, Steve was _something,_ too. Everyone had a secret.

 

*

 

Most of the time, Bucky remained as handsome and healthy-looking as ever. But on the winter of ’36, during the days leading up to Christmas, Steve caught him throwing up again; and his looks quickly degraded after that. His health, too, but in a weird way. When Steve got sick this meant bed rest and days of motionless agony and sometimes a brush with death. When Bucky got sick, he could still function, still walk around to go where he was needed, didn’t even sneeze or nothing. But he slept whenever he wasn’t working, refused Steve’s food, got paler by the hour and had dark circles like he’d been staying up all night.

“Bucky, you gotta _eat,”_ Steve insisted one evening.

Bucky was dozing again on the couch. “I told you, I ate on the docks. You finish it.”

“You’ve been looking pretty sick lately. You need fuel to burn.”

“I’ll get some, _ma.”_ He was lying there with a blanket loosely thrown over him and an arm over his head. “Be right as rain tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?”

“’Cause I’m going out. And it’s the longest night of the year.” Bucky quirked a smile without moving his arm. “Gives a man some time to tend to his personal affairs.”

Steve blinked, then flushed. _“Buck._ I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Taking a gal on a date ain’t going to make you healthy.”

“Hmm. Wanna bet?” Under the crook of his elbow, Bucky’s smirk had bloomed into a grin. “I probably won’t be back tonight. We’ll see how handsome I’m lookin’ in the morning.”

“Well, I’m going out _first.”_

That made Bucky move his arm to look at him. Steve was right—dark circles. “In this weather? Stevie, it’s freezing out.”

“Yeah, and I got some cartoons to turn in.” Steve stacked his papers and strapped them between two sheets of cardboard. He was doing his best to pay for his share of the expenses; let it not be said that Steve Rogers wasn’t doing his part. “I’ll just be in and out, Bucky, don’t sweat it.”

“Don’t go catching pneumonia now.”

“Yes, _ma.”_

Bucky grinned and put his arm over his eyes again. Steve’s eyes traced the gentle swell of his bicep, the veins lining his forearm, the shape of his fingers. The dimple of his chin, the fullness of his lips. Then he shook himself and went for his coat.

 

*

 

He turned in his cartoons all right, re-wrapped his scarf in the clerk’s office and tipped his nose into it before going out. The cold clawed at him like a hissing cat, and he squinted against the wind. Above him the sky was dark, moonless, starless too. Longest night of the year. Christmas was just a few days away, on the other side of that wall of blackness.

Snowflakes twirled in the air, though thankfully it wasn’t snowing in earnest. Steve walked quickly, staring straight ahead, thinking of the coffee he could heat up. Maybe he could curl up on the couch where Bucky had been; maybe it’d still be warm. That was a slightly pathetic thought, but nothing that’d stop him from actually going through with it.

He was passing by a back alley when he heard a voice he recognized.

“Becca?”

The oldest of Bucky’s little sisters was there, with her lovely pale face and big dark eyes. There was a man looming over her. Steve saw red at once.

“Hey!” he yelled, stepping into the alley. “You leave her alone, you hear me?”

The man looked up at him; Becca squealed and backed off, then ran away. _Good for her,_ thought Steve, just before he realized it was pretty bad for him. He still put up his fists up because he didn’t run from fights. Before his mom’s death, maybe he would have run. Before Bucky came to live with him and got so close it was torture, maybe he would have run. But not anymore. He needed every punch in the face he could get, these days.

 

*

 

He didn’t pass out, which was a good thing, but he did sit in cold sludge for a while, waiting to find his bearings. His head was ringing like a bell, and the cold was stinging at the cuts on his face. His eye was swelling shut; his brow was split, just like his bottom lip. When he licked at it, he tasted warm iron.

He had to go home. He couldn’t stay here. Bucky would throw a fit.

Pulling himself up, he made his painful way back to his apartment. Thankfully, he hadn’t been too far when he’d spotted Becca. What was she doing outside, anyway? At this hour, on this night, in this weather? God, his bones hurt. He gritted his teeth and limped up the stairs.

When he got close to the door, he heard something moving inside. _Shit._ Bucky hadn’t left yet.

“Bucky?” he croaked out.

On the other side of the door, the noise stopped all at once.

“Steve?”

Bucky sounded… _wrong._ Raspy and sick. “Shit,” Steve heard him mumble, then, “shit, shit, shit. Fell asleep. Motherfucker.”

“Bucky?” Steve repeated, suddenly scared, getting out his keys. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Fuck. Don’t come in—”

“Don’t _come in?_ What do you mean, don’t come in?” Steve opened the door and heard Bucky take a sharp breath.

The apartment was dark; something fell and broke, maybe a lamp or a plate. Steve couldn’t see a thing, just moving shapes in the darkness, black and silver.

“Fuck.” That was Bucky. Steve could see the outline of him, clambering on the other side of the room, crouching or maybe holding his stomach, feeling his way against the wall. “Fuck. Fuck. What—oh, _fuck,_ you got into a fight.”

“Yeah, I did,” Steve said, walking in and closing the door so he wouldn’t feel the gaping, freezing maw of the hallway in his back.

He wasn’t sure he should talk about Becca, not when Bucky was acting so weird.

“What’s going on, pal?” he said, reaching for the switch. “Are you alright?”

“No, no, don’t _turn on the light—”_

But Steve did. Bucky was curled in a ball at the other end of the room. Steve’s worry bloomed into fear. “Bucky? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Bucky’s voice was a hollow rasp. “God. Please. Don’t come any closer.”

“What are you talking about? We need to get you to a doctor!”

Blood was trickling in Steve’s eye; he wiped it off and flicked it away. Bucky flinched like he’d been sprayed with ice water. Then he unfolded himself and looked at Steve.

His eyes were huge and… unmoving. Unblinking. He was looking at Steve. No—at Steve’s face. No—at the wounds on Steve’s face.

“Fuck,” he exhaled, making his way to Steve like he couldn’t help it, like he was sleepwalking in a nightmare. “Fuck, I waited too fucking long. I’m so fucking hungry. Oh, fuck me, what a fucking idiot.”

“What?” For maybe the first time in his life, Steve was instinctively backing away; he hit the closed door. “Bucky—”

“Why did you have to come into the room,” Bucky mumbled, then grabbed Steve at the collar and pressed him against the door. “God. I’m so sorry.”

 _“Bucky—”_ but he was freakishly strong; Steve couldn’t free himself. He could see Bucky’s pupils, so huge they ate all the blue in his eyes and his teeth—his teeth—

“Fuck,” Bucky said one last time, then pushed his face into the crook of Steve’s neck.

He breathed against his skin. Steve didn’t move; his heart was fluttering in his chest like a bird trying frantically to get out. Bucky was so close. He smelled good, fancy cologne like he always did, but there was something else underneath, a smell Steve associated with the Barnes house—something like cold meat. Steve didn’t move. He knew he couldn’t move. Bucky did, pushing and pressing his face against Steve’s skin, rubbing like a cat, like he was trying to burrow inside him, dragging his open mouth over his skin. Steve could feel his breath, fast and shallow. He had dreamed and dreamed of this moment but he’d never thought it would ever actually happen, and certainly not like _this._

“I don’t,” Bucky said, tight and strained like he was in pain, “I don’t want to hurt you. God. Stevie. Why did you have to pick a fight tonight?”

Steve still didn’t move; he could feel Bucky’s body tense like a bow against him, still pinning him to the door while trying not to—well, he’d said it in his mind now, it was there. Bucky was trying not to bite him.

 _“Steve,”_ he sobbed.

Steve thought of Bela Lugosi and how Bucky had hated the movie and never went to the movies again afterwards. _Dracula. Who’d like that kind of stuff?_

And the Barneses whose beauty wilted and bloomed almost on command. Always more beautiful in winter because the nights were longer then. Bucky had been a kid and enjoyed chocolate but he couldn’t _eat_ chocolate and it had made him throw up. _Food allergies? Somethin’ like that._ He had thrown up too when Sarah had made him eat her food. Normal food. Human food. And their closed-off family and their weird holidays. And their money. Of course they had money to spare. _They never bought any food._

Bucky who always looked healthier coming back from a date.

What had Becca been doing in the back alley? Had she been needing help, really?

“I can’t hurt you,” Bucky gasped. He was crying for good, now. “Please, go, please, run, I’m too hungry, I’m so stupid, I waited too long like I always do, I fell asleep, please get out of here, you smell so good, you smell so fucking good and I don’t want to hurt you…”

“It’s okay,” Steve breathed. He raised a careful, careful hand, and ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “You don’t have to hurt me. Come here.”

“What?” Bucky asked wetly. He sounded scared.

“Come here, come—” Steve guided their mouths together.

The moment Bucky tasted the blood from Steve’s split lip, he went crazy—slammed Steve against the door with renewed strength, pinning his wrists on each side of his body, and sucked on his bottom lip like it was keeping him alive. He drained all he could, then took Steve’s face in his hands and moved to his brow, which was still bleeding abundantly. He licked the blood off Steve’s face where it had trickled down, up to the source, fitting his mouth over the cut and sucking. Steve was motionless, frozen with—fear? Was he afraid? He just let Bucky do what he wanted, hoping it’d be enough. He didn’t want to die, but more importantly, he didn’t want Bucky to kill him. If Bucky ever hurt him he’d feel so guilty he’d die too, probably.

When Bucky was done, when the cut on Steve’s forehead didn’t yield anything more, he went back to his mouth, still holding his face in his hands. It was so much like a kiss Steve gasped for air when it was over.

“Was that…” He swallowed. “Was that enough?”

Bucky laughed without humor at all. “Enough for me to screw my head back on.” He pulled back and wiped his mouth. “God. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” Steve was looking at him, transfixed. “You… you walk in daylight. I’ve seen you do it, plenty of times.”

“None of that shit’s real,” Bucky mumbled.

“You’re not immortal? Undead?” Even as he asked, Steve knew it was a stupid question; he’d just felt Bucky’s heart beat against his own, when he had him pinned.

Bucky scowled. “No.”

“Can’t turn into a bat? How about with mirrors? Crucifixes?”

“Nothing. We’re just people. A different kind of people. Stronger, maybe, but that’s all.”

Having drunk even a small amount of blood, Bucky already looked less feverish, less sickly; the dark circles under his eyes were receding. But he couldn’t look Steve in the face. Before he could step back, try to explain any of it away, Steve reached for him, grabbed him at the collar and pulled him close.

The kiss still stung, but that pain was bliss to him. Bucky sucked more blood from Steve’s bottom lip before he could stop himself, then pulled back. “What are you doing, Steve, what…”

“What?” Steve said, with his heart hammering in his chest. “You can be a vampire but I can’t be a fairy?”

The word made Bucky look up. “You can’t just—you can’t just accept that. Even you. Fuck, Steve, I almost—”

“You almost nothing. You nuzzled my neck and cried. I ain’t threatened by that.”

Bucky looked so offended Steve wanted to laugh at him, but it was more important to kiss him again, while Bucky was too preoccupied to really mind. Except Bucky kissed back more intently this time, not just for Steve’s blood but for Steve’s mouth, too.

“You taste terrible,” he breathed. “This is why I never feed on anemic people.”

Steve snorted.

“Don’t _laugh,”_ Bucky said, “you should be fucking _scared.”_

“Of what? Of you? I know you ain’t ever killed anyone, Buck. Rough up someone, yeah. ‘Cause of me, even, plenty of times. As for your girls, they turn up. Always look like you showed them a pretty good time. So stop trying to make me run away. You know I don’t do that.”

“Wish you would, sometimes,” Bucky mumbled—but he kissed Steve again, making sparks go off behind his eyelids, and this time they didn’t stop for a long while.

 

# XXI

 

Steve’s first few weeks in the future were too chaotic for him to really settle down and figure out what was going on. By the time the battle of New York was over, he was still unsure about this brave new world, but there was something he knew, now. Something familiar.

He went down to the gym where Natasha was training and walked close to the fancy weightlifting machine she was on.

“You’re a vampire,” he said quietly. “Aren’t you?”

She froze. Then slowly let the weight down and looked up at him.

Her hair was blood-red, her lips too. She’d jumped off Steve’s shield with ease, hadn’t eaten during the three days of the attack, hadn’t really eaten with them all post-battle, either. Now that he was really thinking about it, Steve realized that kind of thing was probably easier to hide for a woman.

Natasha didn’t try to play dumb, or deny anything. Just stared at him. After a moment, he realized she was waiting for him to explain how he could have possibly put that together.

“My best friend was like you.” It still hurt so much to talk about Bucky in the past tense.

“Do you mean Bucky Barnes?”

Steve sat next to her on the bench. “Yes.”

“Sergeant Barnes was a vampire,” Natasha repeated almost without any inflexion. After a second, the corner of her mouth curled up. “Shit.”

She seemed oddly proud. Maybe that was enough for her to consider him family. It warmed something in Steve’s frost-cold chest.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “You can trust me. I’ve kept Bucky’s secret all those years. Just wanted to let you know I knew.”

“I appreciate that,” Natasha said slowly. She waited for a while, then asked, “How’d a vampire do on a World War II battlefield?”

Steve got up to leave. He could never talk about Bucky for very long. “Like the rest of us,” he said. “Except he didn’t go hungry as often.”

 

*

 

“He told me vampires weren’t immortal,” Steve murmured, after everything was over, standing in front of Fury’s empty grave and talking about someone else entirely.

“We’re not, Steve,” Natasha murmured.

“So how did he survive?”

She handed him a file, without looking at him. When Steve saw the Cyrillic characters spread across the yellowing paper, his heart seized. He only had to flip through a few pages to get his answer. It was right there on the picture: Bucky in a cryogenic tank, looking at peace, as if in death.

God. They’d always joked about sleeping in coffins, back in Brooklyn.

“I suppose he wouldn’t have survived it all—the ice and the electric wipes—if he hadn’t been… stronger than most,” Natasha allowed.

Steve remembered how ill Bucky had looked during their final fight on the Helicarrier. His inhuman strength had been there, his endurance too. But starvation was etched in his every line. He flipped through the folder some more, tightening his jaw when he got to the German parts—the ones he could actually read.

“Do you think they did it on purpose?” he asked. “Starved him?”

“No. I think they never found out what he was. I think he managed to hide it all these years. Remembered he had to, even when he didn’t even remember his name.”

“But they obviously knew he was enhanced. So, what… ?”

“They were trying to replicate the serum,” Natasha said quietly. “They thought they’d succeeded.”

 

*

 

It was two years before Steve saw Bucky again.

When Bucky turned round to face him, in that small Romanian apartment, the first thing that hit Steve was that Bucky looked _good._ Wary and hunted, but oh-so-healthy—almost disturbingly so, bulky and strong under his layers and layers of clothing. He’d been eating. He’d been feeding.

“Do you know me?” Steve asked, willing his voice not to shake.

Bucky’s gaze betrayed nothing. “You’re Steve. I saw your picture in the museum.”

 _Steve._ Not Rogers, not Captain America. In the spaces of two sentences, Bucky had acknowledged he remembered him, while simultaneously refusing to admit it. Keeping that impossible chasm between them. A few steps, yet just as immense as it felt back in Brooklyn, during all those years Steve had looked and looked but couldn’t ever touch. Steve wanted to beg him, wanted to reach out for him, to say some of the thousand words bubbling up his throat, but one wrong move and Bucky would bolt. That much was clear.

“And,” Steve swallowed, “do you know what you are?”

He’d asked that wrong. He’d meant _who._ Or maybe he’d wanted to reassure Bucky about needing blood, in case he didn’t know, in case he’d _forgotten—_ God, was it possible for him to forget such a thing? But before Bucky could answer or even react, the SWAT team launched their attack and all hopes of a conversation were thrown to the wind.

 

*

 

Steve focused on keeping them both alive, through Bucky’s capture and Bucky’s escape, though their wild chase all the way to Siberia. For a moment, he thought things might still end well; Tony had come to fight by their side, and they were close to stopping Zemo. But as it turned out, it had all been a trap. When the video started, Steve understood the plan—too late—and realized something else, too: Bucky had known everything would lead them to this. He must have known ever since Zemo had questioned him. But he’d let it happen because he wanted them to know. Thought he deserved the consequences. He had been waiting from the start for Steve to find out and kill him.

Tony gave it a good try. But Steve wasn’t going to lose Bucky again. 

They limped out of the base together, leaving Steve’s shield behind. Bucky was almost unconscious, bleeding abundantly in the snow, and Steve himself was heavily concussed. All he could think about was that they’d both survived the ice already, so walking into the tundra felt almost logical to his hazy mind. Anything as long as they were getting away from that hell.

If T’Challa hadn’t found them, they probably would have kept walking into the arctic night until the end of times. Maybe it wouldn’t even have killed them.

 

*

 

It was much later, once they were both clean and bandaged, that Steve finally got the answer to his question.

“Of course I know what I am.” Bucky was sitting on the side of his bed, wearing light white clothing, looking down at the one hand he had left. “I’ve always known. Even when I didn’t know anything else.”

Steve sat by his side, cautiously. “But Hydra didn’t know. I saw in the file they fed you…” _Through a tube,_ he couldn’t say. Intravenously, most of the time. Bucky hadn’t had anything in his stomach to throw back up. He’d sweated out the fluids like a bad fever; Natasha had confirmed it, and it showed on every picture of him, his dark hair matted with wetness, sticking to his face, gleaming sickly under the neon lights.

“How did you survive?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s voice was a low rasp. “You know how.”

A deep silence followed those words.

“They made me kill a lot of people. It was easy to feed on them.” Bucky’s throat moved when he swallowed. “I still remember how Howard tasted.”

 _That_ hadn’t been in the video. _Thank God,_ Steve thought without knowing if it was a selfish thought or not.

Bucky turned his head to look at him, finally. “I want to go in the ice again. Wakanda has the tech.”

Steve understood—God, he understood the need to get away from the world, sleep forever and forget all the horrors of it. All the same, he felt again the urge to beg, like he had in the Romanian apartment; and again, he felt Bucky’s answering wariness. Whatever Steve needed from him, he couldn’t give it. He had so little of himself left; nothing he could afford to give.

Along the road, Bucky had admitted he did remember Steve, down to the slightest details. So he must remember how close they’d once been; he must understand the pain Steve felt hearing those words. The fact that he still chose to say them made Steve realized how much he meant it.

“If that’s what you want, I have no right to stop you.” Steve swallowed. “But I’ll miss you like I’m the one missing a limb.”

“Steve—”

“You have to let me say it. You have to hear me. It’s been four godawful lonely years without you. That time almost killed me. If you want to do this, then I’ll know for sure you’re safe, and I reckon that’ll be just enough for me to get by.” He took a breath. “But God, I’ll _miss_ you.”

Bucky’s face twisted. “I can’t trust myself. I never could. So that’s the best option. For everybody.”

Steve went still.

“What do you mean by that?”

There was no answer.

 _“Bucky._ What do you _mean_ by that? Are you talking about those trigger words, or are you talking about the fact that you’re a goddamn vampire? Because—”

“I lived in a den,” Bucky hissed, “among my own. When we were in Brooklyn. I never fully realized we were monsters. Got a inkling the day I almost killed you. But you brushed it off, and I let you, because I was young and dumb—”

“Monsters?” Steve said, indignant now. “Was Winifred a monster? Was Becca a monster?”

Pain tugged at Bucky’s features again. “I don’t—I can’t answer that. It’s not fair to ask me that. I’m not even sure I remember them enough. But I know what I fucking am.”

“What you did wasn’t your fault,” Steve said, “and what you are isn’t evil. Do you think I could love someone evil?”

Bucky brusquely got up then and left the room, barefoot on the shining floors, shaking his head like he couldn’t, wouldn’t hear more.

All Steve could think of was that Bucky had dark circles under his eyes again. He hadn’t fed since Romania; he must be hungry.

 

*

 

“I can’t put your friend in the ice,” T’Challa said a week later.

His accent pricked Steve’s ear every time; it felt like someone was tapping him on the shoulder, gently but firmly making him pay attention to everything he said.

“We’ve conducted enough tests for me to know. He’s not healthy enough.”

 _No,_ Steve thought, _of course not. He’s starving._ He felt a weird mixture of guilty relief and empathetic pain. Even taking himself out of the equation wasn’t simple for someone like Bucky.

“Have you told him already?” he asked.

“Of course. He’s the one who told me I could let you know.”

T’Challa was a good man—it was still hard for Steve to wrap his head around, sometimes, that there were still people he could trust in the world. Natasha, Sam—he’d thought the list would stop there, but not even the worst horrors could keep it from growing. Not even the worst horrors could make him entirely lose his faith in people.

He chewed on his lip for a second, then walked around the room until he found what he was looking for. Opening a translucent drawer, he took a scalpel off a tray and pocketed it.

“I’ll give it back,” he said.

But T’Challa asked no questions. It suddenly hit Steve that he still did not know where the Black Panther’s superhuman abilities came from. Maybe T’Challa understood Bucky—and Natasha—in a way Steve never could.

The man was a king and Steve was his guest, so he didn’t ask.

 

*

 

Bucky was in his room, curled up on the bed. When he heard Steve coming in, he slowly sat up, resting on his arm with stiff movements.

Steve remembered how exhausted he’d get, back in Brooklyn, when he couldn’t feed often enough. All day in bed, waiting for the long cold nights of winter, when he could take a girl out and take what he needed from her, knowing people wouldn’t notice under thick coats and long sleeves.

“So, here I am,” Bucky said with dry humor. “Caught between a rock and a hard place.”

“I told you, I won’t stop you from going under. If that’s what you want.”

“Can’t do it if I don’t feed.”

“So feed.”

Bucky shook his head. “I fed on HYDRA operatives, back in Romania. Then all the bad people I could find. Nobody here fits that criteria.” He was looking at the floor. “Everyone’s so awful nice.”

“I’m not,” Steve said quietly.

Bucky looked up from under his long, dark hair. Steve still wasn’t used to seeing him like this—he’d always fussed over his coiffed head back in Brooklyn, and kept taking care of his hair even during the war. It was one of the things that hurt Steve the most, this casual neglect Bucky had for himself now, like he’d given up on it all.

“What’d you mean?” Bucky asked warily.

Steve got out his scalpel.

Bucky went very, very still. When he spoke, his voice was a low rumble. “Steve. Don’t do that.”

“Can’t tell me what to do, Barnes. If you didn’t remember that, you’ve learned it again by now.” Steve unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve. Bucky’s eyes tracked his fingers, caught the glint of the scalpel blade in the late afternoon light.

“Don’t.”

“I couldn’t offer you that in Brooklyn. God knows I wanted to. I wanted you to have everything I could give. But I was too sick and too scrawny for that kinda thing. Now?” Steve made a fist so the veins would stand out. “I can bleed for you every day if that’s what you need.”

 _“Don’t,”_ Bucky bit out for the third time.

“Why not?”

Bucky sat so still he was almost trembling. His hand, resting on his lap, had turned into a white-knuckled fist.

“Because you think you don’t deserve it?” Steve challenged. “You’re wrong, but it doesn’t even _matter._ You don’t gotta earn something that keeps you alive. Nobody does.”

“Steve—”

But it was too late; the blade had slipped across Steve’s wrist, cutting deep. He’d aimed for an artery on purpose, knowing a vein would heal too fast. They had a few minutes of blood now.

Bucky’s nostrils flared when the first drops trickled down Steve’s forearm; he sharply turned his head.

“Go away.”

Steve stepped forward. “I will if you ask again. But I’ll bleed all the same. It’ll just go to waste.”

 _“Fuck_ you.” It was almost a sob. “Why are you…”

“You can have it,” Steve said, “I told you the first time—the last time—you don’t have to hurt me. You’ve never hurt me, not even when you were so hungry that night, you kept telling me to go away. And you saved my life in DC with seventy years of HYDRA weighing on you. God, Bucky, you’re not a monster. You’re _Bucky._ My Bucky. I don’t care how much or how little you remember. I don’t care whose blood you have on your hands. I got my own, and it’s all yours. It’ll always be. You can have it all.”

He’d kept getting closer, clutching his bloodied wrist so he wouldn’t ruin the carpet. He sat next to Bucky, held it out to him. His blood was dark red, slowly pulsing out. Bucky kept looking away, visibly straining to do so.

“Why would you…” he said, desperately, like a last recourse.

“You wanna know why I’d do anything for you?” Steve found he was smiling. “Hell, Buck. Do I gotta say it out loud again?”

Bucky’s breath shivered out of him. Then—Steve almost _saw_ his resolve break—he reached out shakily for Steve’s wrist. His fingers wrapped around it, so tight they cut the blood flow. Steve expected him to raise it to his lips, but instead he made Steve lower his arm, keeping it firmly down, and leaned in to kiss him.

It was like breathing underwater all of a sudden, everything blooming inside of him. Steve thought maybe this was how it felt, to drink life at the source. He was still caught in the kiss when Bucky broke it, stayed close to breathe him in, and almost didn’t notice when Bucky finally raised Steve’s wrist between them.

First he licked it clean, then he fastened his mouth over the cut and _drank,_ slow and greedy. Steve’s eyelids fluttered shut again. It hurt, but that pain was nothing, nothing, and he’d have gladly endured it for hours if it meant hours of giving Bucky what he needed.

Bucky was losing his inhibitions, sucking more deeply; a few minutes later he had to stop—the cut had closed. Steve took one look at him and lifted out the scalpel again. “Want me to—”

“Yes,” Bucky moaned, “fuck—please— _yes—”_

Steve notched a cut in the crook of his neck this time, not his jugular but close, where he knew it’d bleed abundantly. Bucky let out another breathy moan and moved close to him, pushing his face against his shoulder, latching onto him. He drank and drank and drank, and Steve didn’t even feel dizzy, even after nearly ten minutes of it. At long fucking last, his body was good for something that wasn’t all fight, death and destruction. He was weirdly proud.

Eventually, the cut in his neck closed too. Bucky pulled back with a gasp.

“More?” Steve asked quietly.

“No. No.” Bucky was out of breath. “That was too much already—”

“I’d do it every day, Buck. Every day.”

He wiped the scalpel on his jeans, then pocketed it again.

“Look, I’m not trying to… to make you feel guilty. I did this so you’d have a real choice. Go under or not. But if you’re putting yourself away just because you think you’re some sort of monster… I gotta speak up. That’s not true. I know you.” Steve looked him in the eye. “And if something can change the way I feel, well, it ain’t happened yet.”

Bucky was still very close to him, clutching at his sleeve. He shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts; maybe feeding made him drowsy. Steve wouldn’t know. He’d never let him see it, not even during the war.

“I need to sleep,” Bucky said at last.

“Right.” Steve’s heart sank. He shifted as if to get up. “I’ll get T’Challa…”

“In the bed, idiot. Stay.” Bucky weighed against him. “Fucking stubborn asshole. You taste a lot better than you used to, you know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Comments give me blood.
> 
> (Wanna support my real-life writing career? You can follow me on [Tumblr](https://naomisalman.tumblr.com/) about it.)


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